Marios Blacklist: Donkey Kong

Not Bowser, Wario or even Wart were the first big enemies of Super Mario, back in 1981 he had to rescue a damsel called Pauline from Donkey Kong who thought he can be like King Kong and take her up a labyrinth of structural beams while DK throws all kinds of obstacles into Mario’s direction.

Mario, known as Jumpman at the time was only able to jump and run but he could also pick up the hammer which made him almost invincible for a couple of seconds. The original Donkey Kong is known today as Cranky Kong btw.

Donkey Kong was the first Nintendo game which was successful outside Japan and started the whole Super Mario bros. series which is known by almost everyone today.

The illustration here was not directly drawn for Mario’s Blacklist but created when we organized this project. Together with 3 other artworks it was chosen to appear here with the permission of the artist which is LuluDubYou.